August Vogel was born on this day, July 17th, in 1875.  He was born just across the Apple Creek in Cape Girardeau County.  He was the son of Wilhelm and Marie (Meyr) Vogel.  He was actually not the first August Vogel born to this couple.  Another August Vogel was born in 1872, but that child died before he was two months old.  August Joseph Vogel was baptized at Immanuel Lutheran Church in New Wells, Missouri.  This 1880 census shows that August’s father was a blacksmith.

August would follow in his father’s footsteps and become a blacksmith.  You can see in this census record that August’s father had an apprentice living in his household.  Later census records indicate that August would have apprentices also.

In 1897, August married another member of Immanuel Lutheran Church.   Her name was Susanne Hemmann.  Here is their marriage license.

Susanne also had an interesting pedigree.  She was the great granddaughter of the prolific patriarch of Paitzdorf (Uniontown), J.G. Hemmann, who had twenty children.  Susanne descends from J.G.’s oldest child, Wilhelm Hemmann, who was her grandfather.  Wilhelm Hemmann had a son named Gustav who was Susanne’s father.  When Gustav had married Margaretha Streit in 1873, he bought some land in the New Wells area and raised his family there.  And it was quite the family.  They would have 13 children, and Susanne was the firstborn.  This is the same family which had the three consecutive sets of twins.  That story can be found by clicking here:  Triple Twins.  It is also the same family from which we find some siblings which were called Dakota Hemmanns in a previous post.

J.G. Hemmann fathered his last child in 1864 at the age of 72.  I am blown away by the fact that Susanne had a great uncle that was a mere eleven years older than she was.

In the 1900 census, we find the Vogels living in New Wells with August as a 24 year old blacksmith.  They also had one child by the name of Lillian.

You can see that Oscar Schrader, a 20 year old wagon maker, is living with the Vogels.  Also, August is called a dealer along with being a blacksmith.  I am not exactly sure what that means.  In 1910, August was still a blacksmith in New Wells, but he had a new apprentice by the name of August Mirly.

When August filled out his World War I draft registration form in 1918, he was living in St. Louis.

On this form, he indicated that he was a salesman for the Mound City Buggy Company.  There is still a building standing in St. Louis that was once used by this company.

The credit for this photo goes to Dr. Ken Jones who has given me permission to use it.  He has a very interesting website which includes several photos like this one that he describes as ghost signs.  You can find the website by clicking on this link:  http://www.drkenjones.com/

I do not think this is the actual building where August worked.  It was probably their manufacturing location.  The address shown on the draft registration was not far from this building, but they probably had other locations where sales were conducted.  This company would also change its name to Mound City Buggy and Auto Company.

Just three years after he filled out the draft form, the 1920 census shows August as a “commercial man” for an automobile company.  I am guessing that is still the Mound City Buggy and Auto Company.

The 1930 census shows August as proprietor of a tin shop in St. Louis with two of his sons working with him.  Meanwhile, in 1922, August’s daughter, Lillian, managed to find a husband back in New Wells.  His name was Eugene Wunderlich, and he was a Lutheran teacher who had returned from attending Concordia College in River Forest, Illinois to become a teacher at his home congregation.  Here is their wedding photo.

However, by 1930, Eugene was principal of a Lutheran school in Detroit, Michigan, and in 1940, he was a teacher at a school in Orange County, California.

It must have been the fact that his daughter was in California that August and Susanne moved to California and are shown living in a trailer next to the Wunderlichs in the 1940 census.

One year prior to that census, we find August and Susanne in a city directory from Anaheim, California.

That address can be seen on this map.

It hadn’t been built yet in 1939, but that location would be right next to the property that would later become Disneyland.  August would die in 1940 at the age of 65.  After his death, Susanne would go and live with her daughter Lillian.  Susanne would die in 1970 at the age of 95.

August would witness many changes in technology in his lifetime that influenced his occupation.  He simply seemed to adjust, learn new skills, and move on.

In closing, I would like to mention a few other connections.  But first, here is a map of the Los Angeles area showing places that either the Vogels or the Wunderlichs lived.

• The last place where we find Eugene Wunderlich is the address in Glendale.  Just down the road you find Altadena, where the Stueve family began their dairy in the 1940’s.  I’m fairly certain that Teacher Wunderlich and his wife were well aware of the fact that plenty of  Perry County folk were arriving to work at that dairy.
• Lillian (Vogel) Wunderlich would live to the ripe old age of 101.
• Another post written on this blog was titled, California Wunder(lich).  The Wunderlich in that story would have been Uncle Martin to the Eugene Wunderlich in this story.  Martin also lived very close to where Disneyland would be built.  These children of Martin would have been Eugene’s California cousins.  It is likely that Eugene and Lillian and even Susanne would have visited them on occasion.

• Last weekend, there was a family reunion of the Hemmann family from the New Wells/Shawneetown area.  They were all from the Gustav Hemmann portion that had ended up in northern Cape County.  This family’s branches spread far and wide because people were in town from all over the country.